Since the end of the 19th century, Central Asia has been known for its natural resources, which included hydrocarbons as well. However, becoming leaders in terms of population growth among post-Soviet countries and betting on the development of the industries, some of them started facing the problem of not having enough reserves for themselves. The solution to the problem was proposed by Russia, whose gas supplies to Europe had collapsed due to the outbreak of the war with Ukraine. Now this idea has come to life, but the path to implementation was not the easiest.

Suppliers trade places

Uzbekistan’s purchase of Russian hydrocarbons has become a reality – the success of this project was confirmed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin during his recent visit to Tashkent. “The energy partnership is progressing successfully,” he said at a meeting with his colleague Abdulla Aripov. – This includes the supply of natural gas, oil and petroleum products from Russia to Uzbekistan.”


This new reality arose a year ago, when Russia’s “Gazprom” and Kazakhstan’s “QazaqGaz” signed an agreement on the supply of Russian gas to Uzbekistan through Kazakhstan in June 2023 and started pumping in October. During the launching ceremony, even the President of Russia Vladimir Putin recalled that the CAC (Central Asia – Center) gas pipeline was originally planned for the opposite direction. “In fact, it was the first transcontinental Eurasian gas route of that time, through which Uzbekistan supplied gas – about 80 billion cubic meters per year – to eight united republics at once,” he said, recalling the 1960s. “Now this route will work in reverse mode and will reliably provide the dynamically growing economy of Uzbekistan and, partly, Kazakhstan: Kazakhstan is developing rapidly and also needs additional energy resources.”

Currently, only 2.8 billion cubic meters of gas are passing through the Soviet pipeline. This is a lot even by the standards of Uzbekistan itself, which consumes about 48 billion cubic meters per year, and it is even more tiny figures for Russia, which is accustomed to operating in volumes of tens of billions of cubic meters. To compare, before the tightening of sanctions in 2022, “Gazprom’s” supplies to Europe (including Türkiye and the Balkan countries outside the European Union) totaled 160-180 billion cubic meters, and now they have fallen to 40–45 billion.

In other words, do not think that at the expense of Central Asia, Russia will compensate for its losses due to Western sanctions – the volume is astronomical to make this method work. Nevertheless, this year Vladimir Putin stated the possibility of 3–fold increase in supplies – up to 11 billion cubic meters. Now the figure does not seem so small, but to make this happen, modernization of the gas transmission system should be thoroughly considered.

The interlocutors of POLITIK Central Asia, familiar with the oil and gas industry, note that the trend of gas purchases by Central Asian countries will become long-term. “Uzbekistan exports its own gas to China, but is forced to reduce these supplies due to  increasing domestic demand,” says Nurlan Zhumagulov, a Kazakh expert and director of the public fund Energy Monitor. “Kazakhstan has a similar problem too – it has obligations to Beijing, and because of their failure, it has even had to pay sanctuary penalties.” According to the expert, the reasons lie in the  conversion of some coal–fired power plants to gas and the growth of the gas chemical industry – for example, three gas processing plants (GPP) are being built in the west of Kazakhstan simultaneously.

  “Uzbekistan’s own gas production is visibly shrinking” continues Marcel Salikhov, another interlocutor of POLITIK Central Asia, president of the Moscow Institute of Energy and Finance. “The location have simply been depleted, and, apparently, the transformation of the country from an exporter to an importer of hydrocarbons is an objective reality.”

Fears for sovereignty

Despite the significant demand of the Central Asian countries for gas, it cannot be said that the scheme involving Russia was adopted easily. The reason is the political risks that the countries of the region first wanted to thoroughly discuss. On the contrary, Moscow was in a pursuit of giving political significance to the agreement and to announce its success as soon as possible.

However, it is worth acknowledging that the word “union” was initiated not by Vladimir Putin, but by the press secretary of the President of Kazakhstan Ruslan Zheldibai. “There are some questions from the media regarding the visit of the head of the country to Moscow (in November 2022, immediately after his re–election for a second term – approx.). In this matter, it should be noted that during the negotiations in the Kremlin between the presidents of Kazakhstan and Russia, they discussed the creation of a “triple gas union” consisting of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan in order to coordinate actions in the transportation of Russian gas through the territories of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,” the press secretary said.

On that day the leader of Uzbekistan was not in Moscow, but, as Vladimir Putin claimed, he was the initiator of the project. “Let me remind you that at the end of last year we were requested to arrange gas supplies by our Uzbek friends. We promptly responded to it, gave appropriate instructions to “Gazprom”, which, cooperated with partners from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, dealt with the necessary technical details, – Putin said at the launch ceremony of the gas pipeline a year ago. –And in June, within the framework of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a contract was already signed for the export of Russian gas to Uzbekistan and an agreement for its transportation through Kazakhstan, according to which Russia will supply 2.8 billion cubic meters of gas to Uzbek consumers in the following two years.”

Photo: JSC “NC” “QAZAQGAZ”

Vladimir Putin did not discuss what happened between November 2022 and June 2023, but meanwhile it was a very important stage of negotiations, during which the most painful issues would be discussed. Some of the frankly inconvenient statements broke through the offices at that time, and the main “doubting” speaker was Zhurabek Mirzamakhmudov, Minister of Energy of Uzbekistan and Deputy Prime Minister for the development of the fuel, energy and chemical industries.

“We will never jeopardize our national interests. Even if we choose to take the action you are talking about, we will do it only through commercial purchase and sale agreements. We will not allow any political conditions to be imposed in return,” he said about Russian gas supplies. “If the gas is brought to our border and given to us at a reasonable price, we will get it, if not, then no.” Those days, a completely pessimistic headline also appeared on the website of the leading Russian business publication “Kommersant”: “The Triple Alliance did not work out.”

In Kazakhstan though, at first, they kept silent, promising to study the proposal as closely as possible before making any promises.

Moscow’s rhetoric stood out against this cautious background. For instance, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak already in December 2022 presented the issue as practically settled, where the only thing left was to “work out the technical details.” In addition, Tashkent and Astana were seemingly confused by the words of the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov. Immediately after the talks between Putin and Tokayev, he raised the topic of a certain “legal entity” that should coordinate gas supplies to Central Asia. “What President Putin has in mind is the creation of a coordination mechanism at the first stage. Maybe, of course it still needs to be discussed with a certain legal entity: for cooperation between these three countries, and for infrastructure development then for foreign markets,” he said.

It is quite logical that the Central Asian countries saw this as a threat: if a certain “legal entity” is engaged in coordinating gas supplies in the region, what will be the role of national governments? The situation was also fueled by the way this topic was covered by the Russian media. Wanting to highlight the success of Russian foreign policy as much as possible (which was especially important during the failures in the Ukrainian war: the retreat in the Kharkiv region and the loss of Kherson on November 11, 2022), public speakers tried to give the idea a big name. At first it was the “Triple Gas Alliance”, but then some tried to offer an alternative name– the “Gas Entente”. The main point is, that the Triple Alliance is a term from the First World War, and it included Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, that is, opponents of the Russian Empire.

Therefore, in January 2024, the head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, had to already meet with Zhurabek Mirzamakhmudov and sign a roadmap in which the parties removed all contradictions of a political nature. It is easy to guess exactly what they were about from the publications of the Uzbekistan’s government departments immediately after the negotiations.

“It should be highlighted that the negotiations and the roadmap will be provided for the supply of natural gas to the domestic market in the required amounts while fully preserving ownership rights to the existing gas transportation system of the Republic of Uzbekistan and its management rights. In this case, there is no any threat to either the gas transportation system or our sovereignty,” the Ministry of Energy of Uzbekistan said. Obviously, if there were no doubts about this, such a clarification would also be unnecessary.

Moscow, nevertheless, got a political bonus from signing the final agreement. The start of deliveries fell on October 7, Vladimir Putin’s birthday, and the presence of Kassym–Jomart Tokayev and Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the Novo-Ogarevo residence on this day, of course, had symbolic significance.

Kazakhstan’s interest

Although Uzbekistan is the main consumer of Russian gas in the current topic, Kazakhstan also, highly likely, will not remain in the role of transit forever. “Kazakhstan is developing rapidly as well and needs supplementary energy resources,” Vladimir Putin initially hinted.

This is also confirmed by the roadmap signed by Alexey Miller with First Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Roman Sklyar. It clearly went beyond simple transit and, among other things, included topics of “processing Kazakh gas at the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant, the possibility of supplying Russian gas to Kazakhstan, as well as promising cooperation projects.”

By “Russian gas supplies to Kazakhstan”, it is probably meant a very important project for the country: gasification from scratch in the rather inaccessible northern and eastern regions: Pavlodar, Semey, Ust-Kamenogorsk.

“Russia is offering to build a pipeline through the north of Kazakhstan to China,” explains Nurlan Zhumagulov. – Its capacity can reach up to 40 billion cubic meters per year, which is enough for both Kazakhstani and Chinese consumers. In general, Kazakhstan has already got used to earning even more from gas transit than from production and processing.”

The agreement between Moscow and Astana, signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2023, contains another inconspicuous detail – supplies to Kyrgyzstan. While they do exist, the amount is small – about 0.3 billion cubic meters per year. Discussions about increasing flows are ongoing, though they face an objective limit due to the extremely challenging landscape and the small population of the republic.

As Deputy Minister of Energy of Kyrgyzstan Talaibek Baigaziev stated, there is no talks about supplying Russian gas to China through Kyrgyzstan. However, Beijing will definitely notice the appearance of Russian hydrocarbons in the Central Asian market, because due to this, the deficit in the region will disappear. “For a long time, Russia perceived the countries of Central Asia as its potential competitor in the European market, which is why the old Soviet gas pipeline was idle,” says industry expert Marcel Salikhov. – Now that Moscow has lost the European market, it has initiated the cooperation. And it turned out to be quite in demand, as the main gas producer in the region, Turkmenistan, is tightly tied to exporting to China only.”